Intergenerational Trauma

Presented by Debra Gill & Vivian Eskin

4 CEUs
Dates: February 20 2026
Time: 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM EST
Fee: $125

Abstract

This seminar explores how trauma travels across generations—not only through stories or biology, but through silence, fantasy, unconscious identification, and embodied emotional communication. Drawing on the work of Faimberg, Hirsch, Abraham & Torok, Bion, Meltzer, Laub, Volkan, Ira Brenner, Sandor Ferenczi, John Steiner, and contemporary couple psychoanalysis, we examine how unprocessed trauma becomes embedded in internal object relations, shape’s identity, and forms the internal couple carried into adult partnerships. Through clinical material and theoretical discussion, participants will learn how inherited suffering appears in individual and couple dynamics, and how therapeutic witnessing, containment, and the creation of a reflective couple state of mind can help transform traumatic legacies into symbolization, mourning, and creative relational life.

Course Objectives

1. Explain Pathways of Transmission
   Describe psychoanalytic mechanisms of intergenerational transmission—including silence, postmemory, crypt and phantom, projective identification, dissociation, chosen trauma, and failures of containment—and articulate how these mechanisms shape internal worlds.

2. Analyze the Impact on Internal Object Relations and Symbolization
   Identify how inherited trauma influences internal object relations, the capacity to receive the good object, the development (or collapse) of Britton’s third position, and the formation of the internal couple.

3. Apply Concepts to Clinical Work with Individuals and Couples
   Recognize manifestations of intergenerational trauma in clinical presentations—such as unconscious loyalties, reenactments, affect storms, and defensive couple systems—and utilize therapeutic witnessing, containment, and reflective dialogue to foster symbolization and mourning.